Today is the 250th anniversary of Boston’s mass inoculation against smallpox on July 3, 1776. The city was effectively closed to commerce from July through September 1776. The mass immunization effort was cheered as evidence of true independence. Here's how I described it in my book:

The only logical conclusion is that ancient hominids reproduced via parthenogenesis

My "Human T-lymphotrophic Virus" hat is dying, so I need a new virus hat. Anyone got a lead? Old conference swag, some indie maker, etc?

As a biologist, (ergo a layman w/r/t national intelligence), I've found it surprising how, with each declassification, we see how little was added by SIGINT. I assumed we'd been monitoring gene synth and oligo sequences in China since, like, 2006. But when you're outside everything looks easy!

*Preprint Alert*: How do we measure resolution when biomolecules won't sit still? 🔬 Estimating it for a static cryo-EM reconstruction is standard. But what about a conformational ensemble? arxiv.org/abs/2606.14449 with the amazing henryhmattingly.bsky.social and @lukeevanshandle.bsky.social #cryoEM

After nine years at the head of the Rutgers CryoEM & Nanoimaging Facility, I am stepping down to focus on scholarship in the area of virology. I will be joining the Dept of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Rutgers as an associate professor in the fall.

Banning American scholars from writing articles or collaborating with counterparts in other countries is such a terminally idiotic form of shooting ourselves in the foot in terms of national competitiveness that it makes no sense to make this a term of receiving R&D grant support.

Just saw the news that HHS has hounded coronavirus expert Ralph Baric into retirement. Baric is an accidental hero who was doing blue-sky research on animal coronaviruses before SARS thrust him into the role of protecting us from pandemics. Without his work, SARS-CoV-2 would have been far worse.

One thing that drives me nuts in peer review is when there are concerns about a manuscript's fundamental significance or fit for journal and it gets pushed on to a 2nd or 3rd round of review before rejection. This is not something you can fix in an additional round of review!

This is interesting...our experience is we get devitrification under similar thermal annealing cycles (although we used buffered protein solutions instead of whole cells, so one possible difference is the intrinsic cryoprotectant ability of cells)

I suspect most cryo-EM experts leave unsaid that we all think filter paper blot-based plunge freezing will be obsolete in 10 years but we have no idea what technique will obsolete it.

the posting is live jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/270...

It's time for me to hire someone so we can determine the origin of life in the universe together. Is that of interest to anybody

We had a cure for hemophilia A, until today. This feels so strange to say, or to contemplate: that we can un-cure a disease because of collective disinterest.

dicing up some grubs for old-fashioned diagnostic virology

At what resolution in cryo-EM do you see clear holes in aromatics? I see in some X-ray crystallography literature people are saying 1.6Å, but in cryo they seem quite visible at lower resolutions than this.

life achievement: replaced my chainsaw chain for the first time

She couldn't resist the opportunity to explicitly say she's punishing Harvard for hiring former elected or appointed Democrats. This level of explicitly partisan score-settling is wrong and un-American.

I know I haven't been active on here much lately but...I am hiring a core facility postdoc to own the Krios, do a lot of cryoET jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/249...

I was thinking to myself "what were the best years so far for USA? maybe 1998 and 2014?" This leads to my new hypothesis (nonserious) that the best years are going to be an inflection point in the median income (PPP-adjusted) with positive first derivative.

Trafficking studies that rely on following virus microinjected into the cytoplasm aren't valid if the virus in native cells would be inside a membranous organelle.

Since I got a third cryo-transmission electron microscope, I have more 'scope time than I know what to do with. If you have a project that requires a large amount of data collection, get in contact because we can probably work something out.

Don't be a useful idiot puppet for the regime drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/02/25/d...

Wondering if your study section cancelled? I update this sheet daily. As of today, 56/124 study sections that should have met since Jan 2, 2025 have "not met as scheduled." docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Does anybody else find it weird that it's common for receptor homologs to bind different viral species of the same family but in a completely different pose? I would've thought a priori that if receptor use is conserved, the pose will also be conserved,

Next Thursday I am teaching in the morning, flying to Wyoming, dinner with the faculty, meetings/seminar all day, flying back on the red-eye. Feels like what my schedule used to be like pre-pandemic

This is great visual of what IDC is used for from the Council of Governmental Relations (COGR).

Academics with tenure: we aren’t supposed to cower and grovel for money like people do in other jobs. The whole point of tenure is to be liberated and courageous.

Thrilled to see the approval of a Nav1.8 inhibitor for pain. Has anyone tested whether the analgesic effects of suzetrigine and opiates are additive, synergistic, or antagonistic?

Tests: not enough tests & not fast enough thanks to CDC. New tests might not be authorized by FDA. CDC not tracking data or sharing it. CMS again not covering testing costs. No tests, no detection, no ability to contain the outbreak.

a health official being quoted in the newspaper saying TB "is a respiratory virus" does not fill me with confidence that the outbreak will be managed competently

Complying in advance doesn't protect you, it just gets you on historical record as a quisling: The NIH Edition drugmonkey.scientopia.org/2025/01/21/c...

David & I preparing for electron microscopy class on the JEM-2010F

We are hosting a cryo-EM grid nanofabrication workshop on 28 April 2025, as part of the Canadian Cryo-EM Nexus (ccemn.ca). Learn how to make holey gold or holey carbon grids in your own laboratory! Space is limited, so please apply at web.cvent.com/event/ee88ac...

US government is botching bird flu in the exact same ways the botched COVID. Completely avoidable disaster that the Biden administration sleepwalked straight through.

well, OK then, if you say so...

Every time my lab visits the Stanford Linear Accelerator, there is some hardware catastrophe or power outage or something. I think we bring all our bad luck to California. Better that than keeping it at home, though

Cleaning out old files and wanted to post this because I got nostalgic: me in grad school with my dear colleague Joanita Jakana in front of the JEM-3200FSC. A good teacher and friend.

It was revealed during the trial that FHP had agreements with pathologists, where some % of tests with abnormal but inconclusive results would be reported as normal, preventing tests and costs. These agreements were once in writing, but for obvious reasons, became verbal. But the practice continued.

𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 This study reveals that enterovirus-containing #endosomes can deform and rupture, enabling the release of genome-containing particles into the cytoplasm. 3/9

I'm going to run an intensive "boot camp" called "Practical Cryo-EM" where we learn how to freeze grids, align microscopes, collect images, and do 3D reconstruction and stuff. January 13-17

One like = one piece of lore If we hit triple digits I will probably switch to virus lore but this seems as good a way as any to introduce myself to the new skeeters

I spend a lot of time in public libraries

the school sent photographers for an upcoming press release and they took a picture of what looks like me petting the Krios

I expected I would spend most of my bench time as PI showing people techniques I know and they don't, but I actually spend most of my bench time showing people techniques that neither of us know. Is "ability to sorta figure things out from the manual + literature + internet" a teachable skill?

we're so fucked we're so fucked we're so fucked

Hi there. We're Retraction Watch -- retractionwatch.com -- and we've joined Bluesky.

Identifying a new viral pathogen the old-fashioned new-fashioned way: by imaging it directly with cro-electron microscopy, at high enough resolution that you can pick out what variety of virus it is:

serifs are lindy

Good morning